PEI announced that islanders will soon have access to abortion services, which has been unavailable in the province for over 30 years. Earlier this year, PEI pro-choice activists made plans to sue the provincial government over the long-standing lack of services.

A whole bunch of stuff was discussed and voted on at City Council on Thursday, including plans for SmartTrack and the East Gardiner. Check out Neville Park’s liveblog for Torontoist for the most salient details.

Part of an ongoing series profiling women in Toronto politics, community-building, activism, and other aspects of municipal or political life.

By Julia Chew

When Kristyn Wong-Tam chose to run for office in 2009, she surprised herself. As a tireless community advocate, Councillor Wong-Tam was alerted early on to societal injustices as a child of immigrant parents and as a racial minority. Five years after her first election, Councillor Wong-Tam can now look back and see political life as a natural evolution for her lifelong advocacy work and passions. We spoke to her to discuss political life, community engagement, and what the women of Toronto need.

Q: From your point-of-view, how do we build a truly equitable Toronto? What do the women of Toronto need?

A: Women in this city need policies and decision-making that is women-centered. If you start to build communities for women, you build communities for everyone. Women aren’t just 52% of the population, there’s an intersection to womanhood that brings together women with disabilities, immigrants, young/old, vulnerable, racialized populations and many more.

In order to have gender-informed decision-making, we need to build a gender equity lens over all of policy-making. When you create budgets in the city that are women-focused, you start to re-evaluate your spending. For example, women are the majority users of public transit. Women also work in areas that aren’t in the financial district. So would we build transit lines that primarily facilitate travel to the financial district? If we were building transit with women in mind, we would build transportation that allow for greater connectivity, flexibility, and affordability.

To build a more compassionate, more inclusive Toronto, we need to start by recognizing that misogyny and sexism exists, and that decision –making has not traditionally reflected the real life experience of women. We need to acknowledge that the political and policy tools we have right now don’t address the needs of women, simply because they were developed by men for their own needs within a framework of patriarchy.

Q: How has political life shaped your advocacy work and activist roots?

A: It makes perfect sense now that what I wanted to do as a private citizen, I am just now doing in a position of power at City Hall. I am the same person, informed by the same principles, objectives, and values, but am now more aware of the political processes of policy-making.

Not every activist needs to run for office, but the activist within me was -limited to a certain extent and could not reach the next level of engagement and execution. We need to respect people for where they are. Often times, especially for progressive work, there is a level of impatience as the injustice affecting the many is so great But the struggle for equality and inclusion is not necessarily stagnant. We must build political support and awareness at every opportunity and never stop. Q: How do you communicate and engage with the community?

A: I developed a simple process that involves the acronym C-E-P. “C” stands for communication. It is important to be clear in communications and not to insult people with heavy academic language because we are competing with other interests for people’s time and attention. It is crucial that a message have easy access points to communicate in a way that people will accept.

Communications leads to “E” for Engagement. By providing the community with greater opportunities to engage whether it is through a film, art, etc., there has to be an opportunity to respond through engagement or two way dialogue or interaction. This flow of information or a transfer of knowledge and creativity sparks “P” which stands for Participation. Now that you are keenly engaged, what is the physical action we will take? Shall we call our elected officials? Create a pop-up urban design project? How do we execute? What does participation look like for each unique individual? And how do we leverage and respect that participation will mean different things to different people.

Today WiTOpoli is launching the Position Primer website, an easy-to-use online tool that will help Torontonians make an informed decision on who should represent their wards in the next term of City Council.

By simply entering their postal codes, Toronto residents can compare their council candidates’ stances issue-by-issue to see whose vision aligns most closely with their own for the community and the city at large. We surveyed every Toronto City Council candidate whose email address we could find (that’s 240 of the 359 candidates – check out our public contact sheet here), and got answers from 165 of them! That’s a response rate of 68.8%, and we’re pretty darn pleased with it. On each ward chart, candidates are listed in the order in which they filled out the survey.

The WiTOpoli team is so proud of this project and we could not have done it without your support! Join us tonight at the launch party at Studio Bar from 8pm-midnight where you’ll get a look at the new Position Primer and dance the night away. Details/RSVP on Facebook.

Help spread the word the about the Position Primer by putting up our poster in your community (think grocery stores, dollar stores, community centres, and other heavily used spaces!). You can download the Position Primer Poster in PDF format to print at home, or download the image below to share with your online communities.

Posters can also be picked up free of charge at the Centre for Social Innovation’s Annex office at 720 Bathurst Street. The posters will be available at the front desk between 9:00am and 7:00pm. Or, join our volunteers as they put up posters around the city by checking out our Position Primer Poster Party! Together we can paint the town Position Primer teal and help as many Torontonians as possible feel confident about their choices on October 27th.

The URLs PositionPrimer.ca and PositionPrimer.com both work!

A special thank to all our crowdfunder contributors who made this website possible. For those of you who have yet to receive your perks, we haven’t forgotten about you! It’s been a busy election season for us WiTOpoli bees, and we promise those perks are coming as soon as possible – by early November is our goal.

A roundup of some of the latest news in women, Toronto, and/or politics this week. What stories did you read this week? Tell us in the comments.

This week’s marathon City Council meetings were bursting with headline-worthy potential. Fare Equity for low-income TTC riders will be studied further, the city’s shelters chief will investigate reserving beds for LGBTQ homeless youth, and Union Station plaza will be named for John A. Macdonald despite councillors’ concerns over his racist comments towards Chinese Canadians.

In national news, CUPE Ontario urged the federal government to reject Bill C-36 and decriminalize all forms of sex work.

During a hearing on the proposed sex work bill, Conservative MP Robert Goguen posed a pointless question to witness Timea Nagy about her experience during a gang rape. Though Nagy did not appear offended by the question, Liberal MP Sean Casey insists Goguen should be removed from the justice committee.

The folks at Press Progress broke down the numbers on child care costs in Canada, highlighting the ineffectiveness of the government’s Universal Child Care Benefit plan.